Hello.
First thanks for this feature packed update, plenty to try out. One area I was interested in is better retopology tools, and from first apearence is seemed the topology brush was that. Iv been trying to get polygons to appear by drawing patches of curves over the mesh, but no polygons show, at least only here and there, dont seem to be working for how I expect it to?
Thanks.
Did you read about the Topology Brush in the ZBrush4_R4_whats_new.pdf in the ZBrush Documentation folder? Starts on page 50.
Yes I did thanks, didnt shed no light on why its not working. Im crossing the curves to make what should be polygons, no polygons appear.
Can you show an image of your attempt?
Yea sure, il give it another go today and post some pics up. Im taking it that I should beable to create a clean low poly base mesh using this brush then?
Ok here is a quick example. Iv made the draw size 1, and drawed several curves on the torso, only one polygon is showing.
Thanks, that’s very useful. Yes, you should be able to create a complete new base mesh if you wish.
Don’t use a Draw Size of 1, use something like 20. This will mean the curves snap to the surface and provide good vertex creation for most situations. Then, when you have a good topology established, change the Draw Size to 1 before clicking the model to create the new mesh.
Just gone back and tried larger draw size, its producing a few more polygons, but its hit n miss, and half the polygons are triangles. Unless there is somthing obviouse im missing, it dont feel like this feature is quite usable yet, would like to see this in action as in pheory it could be a very fast way for retopology. Im trying my best to look for the green points to click on, but it seems the last point is not snaping.
Thanks.
It’s important to draw lines that cross rather than simply meet. It is only when two lines cross that ZBrush can tell that a vertex is needed.
Thanks Marcus, thats what I was doing wrong, I was trying to keep it clean. I find it difficalt to work this way if I have to always leave extended curves behond the area im wanting to work on, but im sure il get used to it.
Thanks again.
Thanks for this thread on the topology brush because It was driving me crazy last night. This should be in the topo videos or somewhere people can find it. I thought it was broken.
This was driving me crazy the other day (curves not joining up) but after seeing this thread I have tried it with the draw size at 20 and It’s much, much better. Works pretty good now.
I noticed if you press alt and do a stroke anywhere on the model it cleans up all the straggly ends at once. Pretty neat. Also, hitting the number 6 key a few times (or holding it down) smoothes the curves up nice.
This is going to be a handy tool. Hopefully in the next revision it will allow the moving of points around.
After giving it a try (and using Draw mode in Topogun quite a bit) I personally find retopo via curves and reyling on intersections pretty fiddly. Given that you can’t move points either is a huge limitation. Still find that nothing works as good as simply drawing polys directly on the surface, with simple bridge, extrude and cut tools. In some ways I prefer the old zSphere method.
Still encouraging to see this new brush, but it needs to go way further before I switch from Topogun.
I agree, its not quite efficiant as it could be, but realy good to see it there for a future retopo tool set. I normaly build my meshes with the needed topology these days as retopology can take a huge amount of time.
I’ve watched the new tutorial for the Topology Brush and am still struggling to get it working consistently even with tweaking the snap distance etc.
As soon as things get a little more complex I seem to spend all my time trying to get one quad to exist then I break another, then I fix that one and two more break lol 
Its a new tool, so its gona take time till its fully usable for complex retopo. Probley going to be refined in R5 or somthing.